While first day jumps in IPOs make for great TV and everyone is anxiously awaiting their allocation to the 'greatest IPO of all time' this week, we thought it might be useful to look at some of the larger and more recent tech IPOs to get some perspective on how close to the moon we will get when Facebook is released.

It may not be a household word, but the battle over your broker's "fiduciary" role has moved in a new direction -- away, some say, from a lot of clients' best interests. A major push by consumer advocates to hold stockbrokers to the same client-comes-first standard of care required of investment advisers -- the so-called fiduciary standard -- seemed close to success only a year ago. The five SEC commissioners, however, never voted to change the rules. Now, the SEC is saying it won't write any new rules until it studies how much they might cost the industry.

President Barack Obama asked Congress for another $1.2 trillion in government borrowing authority, the third and final request under an August deal with lawmakers that averted a U.S. default. The president’s notification to congressional leaders starts a 15-day countdown for lawmakers to consider and vote on a joint resolution disapproving of the increase.

Without a hard deadline, there is nothing that can force change upon a system already in motion, no matter how self-destructive. Unfortunately, the clock in Europe is ticking as a deadline approaches, and somewhat poetically, the place where it all started is where it may end. In March Greece faces a redemption cliff: if by then the €130 billion promised to it by the Troika as per the July 21 second bailout, is not delivered, it is game over.

The major U.S. stock indexes may not have gotten very far in 2011—the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 6.2% for the year and the Standard & Poor's 500 stock-index is up less than 1% —but there was plenty to keep investors interested all year long. Geopolitical upheaval, natural disasters, sovereign-debt crises and credit-rating downgrades competed for the market's attention. These forces whipped stocks around to a degree not seen since the financial crisis three years ago.

European banks borrowed enough cash from the European Central Bank at its first three-year offering to refinance almost two-thirds of the debt they have maturing next year amid concern that markets will remain frozen. The 523 euro-area lenders took a record 489 billion euros ($638 billion) from the Frankfurt-based central bank in 1,134- day loans today, more than economists’ median estimate of 293 billion euros in a Bloomberg News survey. That equals about 63 percent of the European bank debt maturing in 2012, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts.

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged six former top executives of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) with securities fraud, alleging they knew and approved of misleading statements claiming the companies had minimal holdings of higher-risk mortgage loans, including subprime loans.

European leaders’ blueprint for a closer fiscal union to save their single currency left the onus on central bankers to address investor concerns that Italy and Spain would succumb to the two-year-old financial crisis. On the 20th anniversary of the Maastricht summit that created the euro and 19 months since leaders forged their first plan to contain the debt turmoil, leaders added 200 billion euros ($267 billion) to their warchest and tightened rules to curb future debts. They sped the start of a 500 billion-euro rescue fund to next year and diluted a demand that bondholders shoulder losses in rescues.

Standard & Poor’s on Tuesday cut its credit ratings for many of the world’s largest banks, including Citigroup (NYSE: C), Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC). The move follows S&P’s shift, announced earlier this month, in the methods it uses for rating the banks. Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Corp. each had their long-term credit rating downgraded a single notch to A- from A. Similar cuts were applied to JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS).

Claims for unemployment benefits dropped to the lowest level in seven months and housing starts exceeded forecasts, signaling improvement in the weakest areas of the U.S. economy. Applications for jobless benefits decreased 5,000 in the week ended Nov. 12 to 388,000, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. Starts decreased 0.3 percent to a 628,000 annual rate in October, according to the Commerce Department. The median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for a drop to 610,000. Building permits, a proxy for future construction, jumped 10.9 percent.

Claims for unemployment benefits dropped to the lowest level in seven months and housing starts exceeded forecasts, signaling improvement in the weakest areas of the U.S. economy. Applications for jobless benefits decreased 5,000 in the week ended Nov. 12 to 388,000, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. Starts decreased 0.3 percent to a 628,000 annual rate in October, according to the Commerce Department. The median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for a drop to 610,000. Building permits, a proxy for future construction, jumped 10.9 percent.

Elaine Floyd, CFP®, is director of retirement and life planning for Horsesmouth, a New-York based company that provides information and support to financial advisors. She is the author of Savvy Social Security Planning for Boomers, a comprehensive package designed to assist financial advisors in helping baby boomers integrate Social Security into their overall retirement plan.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Government-controlled mortgage giant Freddie Mac has requested $6 billion in additional aid after posting a wider loss in the third quarter. Freddie Mac said Thursday that it lost $6 billion, or $1.86 per share, in the July-September quarter. That compares with a loss of $4.1 billion, or $1.25 a share, in the same quarter of 2010. This quarter's $6 billion request from taxpayers is the largest since April 2010.

European leaders cajoled bondholders into accepting 50 percent writedowns on Greek debt and boosted their rescue fund’s capacity to 1 trillion euros ($1.4 trillion) in a crisis-fighting package intended to shield the euro area. The 17-nation euro and stocks climbed while bond spreads narrowed after leaders emerged early today from a 10-hour summit in Brussels armed with a plan they said points the way out of the quagmire, albeit with some details still to be ironed out.

Bank of America did something quite tricky and extremely devious last month: it shifted anywhere up to the total of $53 trillion of the total derivatives it held as of June 30 on its books at Q2 from the Holding Company, which was downgraded last by Moody's from A2 to Baa1 (the third-lowest investment grade rating) to its retail bank, which was downgraded to the far more palatable A2 (from Aa3). The reason for the transfer? Bank customers who were uneasy with the fact that suddenly the collateral backstoping the operating entity handling their counterparty risk was downgraded to just above junk, demanded that said counterparty risk be mitigated by the bank's $1 trillon in deposits, peoples deposits.

U.S. retail sales rose more than expected in September as Americans spent more on cars, clothing and fuel, an indication that consumers remain willing to shop despite high unemployment and a weak recovery.Retail and food services sales climbed 1.1% from the previous month to an adjusted $395.47 billion, the Commerce Department said Friday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast a 0.8% increase.

Payrolls climbed by 103,000 after a revised 57,000 increase the prior month, Labor Department data showed today in Washington. The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey called for a rise of 60,000. The gain reflected the return to work of 45,000 telecommunications employees. The jobless rate held at 9.1 percent. Hours and earnings increased

For instance? Investing, where modern portfolio theory is not very different in the way we apply it than it was when Dwight Eisenhower occupied the White House. How is that possible? Unlike Harry Markowitz when he was writing his seminal research, advisors today live in the Information Age. We know things Markowitz only suspected: that during normal markets, correlations among assets tend to move around unpredictably within a surprisingly tight spectrum of numbers, and then behave very differently whenever investors are paralyzed with fear or excited. Interestingly, the same is true about measures of investment volatility.

No doubt in reaction to the significant weakening of the economy over the past several months, the Federal Reserve acted as expected and announced what's known as "Operation Twist" (OT). The goal of this program, first instituted in 1961 and indeed named after the dance popular at the time, is to lengthen the average maturity of the Fed's balance sheet. The result, ostensibly, will be to lower longer-term borrowing rates, including mortgage rates. 

America's poverty rate clicked up again last year and now stands at its highest level since the early 1990s. But what exactly does it mean to live in poverty in one of the richest countries on earth?In many parts of the world, poverty means starvation. But in the U.S., the standard is far more elusive. Currently, it is defined as having income below $22,314 for a family of four. But that only includes pretax income, and therefore it neglects a number of programs—such as food stamps, the Earned Income Tax Credit and subsidized housing—that form the backbone of the nation's antipoverty efforts.

"We're on the way to a worldwide financial dictatorship governed by bankers," said Peter Gauweiler, German Bundestags Representative, in an interview  published Monday in the Welt Online. "We don't support Greece," he said. "We support 25 or 30 worldwide investment banks and their insane activities." 

This, just as Wolfgang Schäuble, Finance Minister, has been dealt a defeat of sorts by his own governing coalition during the trial vote for the expansion of the current European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) whose purpose it is to bail out an ever lager circle of debt-sinner countries. 25 members of his coalition voted against it or abstained. The actual vote is scheduled for September 29.

Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits. By 2008, the housing market’s collapse forced those companies to take more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret.

On Saturday, August 20th, Don will interview C. Thomas Howard, Ph.D. from the University of Denver and founder of Athena Invest regarding the continuing research discounting a 60 year-old theory of money management.

The financially strapped U.S. Postal Service is proposing to cut its workforce by 20 percent and to withdraw from the federal health and retirement plans because it believes it could provide benefits at a lower cost. The layoffs would be achieved in part by breaking labor agreements, a proposal that drew swift fire from postal unions. The plan would require congressional approval but, if successful, could be precedent-setting, with possible ripple effects throughout government

There will be plenty of hyperbole inspired by Thursday's market elsewhere, we will offer instead a few (hopefully objective) observations regarding where the August 4th 500 point drop in the Dow ranks relative to some of the others drubbings in market history. For the record, the S&P fell 4.78% on Thursday, while the Dow very nearly kept pace with its own decline of 4.31%.

NEW YORK -- Amid the contentious debt ceiling debate, the United States is at risk of being booted out of a prestigious group of countries that boast a spotless credit rating. Only 17 countries in the world -- currently including the U.S. -- hold the highly coveted triple-A rating from both Standard & Poor's and Moody's. (S&P rates an additional three countries as triple-A, that aren't featured on Moody's list). Germany, Canada, France, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland are among those with the undisputed stamp of approval -- so is the Isle of Man, a country off Ireland's east coast, and Singapore. Now, S&P and Moody's are questioning the United States' membership in this exclusive club.

BRUSSELS—Euro-zone leaders agreed Thursday on a new €109 billion ($157 billion) bailout for Greece and new steps to prevent its debt crisis from metastasizing across the Continent—in a plan expected to trigger the first debt default by a nation using the common currency. The meeting also produced a stark and open-ended declaration: The wider euro zone is committed to financing countries that take bailouts—thus far, Greece, Ireland and Portugal—for as long as it takes them to regain access to private lenders. Still, it remains to be seen whether the tourniquet will hold. Even after the new plan, Greece will have a staggering load of debt.

Buffeted by high taxes, strict regulations and uncertain state budgets, a growing number of California companies are seeking friendlier business environments outside of the Golden State. And governors around the country, smelling blood in the water, have stepped up their courtship of California companies. Officials in states like Florida, Texas, Arizona and Utah are telling California firms how business-friendly they are in comparison

As retirement nears, many boomers are coming face to face with the fact that their nest egg might not provide them with enough income to last through retirement. In fact, more than 40% of baby boomers are at risk of not even having enough retirement income to pay for basic retirement expenses like uninsured health-care costs, according to a 2010 study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. And in looking at this situation, it seems clear that whatever we’re doing to save for retirement just isn’t cutting it. 

US companies are buying back their own stock at the fastest pace since 2007, a trend that is helping maintain the resilience of the broad market. Strong company balance sheets, a shortage of profitable investment opportunities and low interest rates are helping drive the latest surge instock buy-backs. On Tuesday, Best Buy, the vast consumer electronics retailer, was the latest company to announce plans to buy back its stock with a $5bn share repurchase plan.

When adding in all of the money owed to cover future liabilities in entitlement programs the US is actually in worse financial shape than Greece and other debt-laden European countries, Pimco's Bill Gross told CNBC Monday. Much of the public focus is on the nation's public debt, which is $14.3 trillion. But that doesn't include money guaranteed for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which comes to close to $50 trillion, according to government figures.

A surprise OPEC meeting result has sent oil surging and left everyone guessing what's the cause of the dissent on the usually consistent board. First, today's new was not a complete surprise. Saudi Arabia, the group's most powerful member, wanted to raise production, but others prior to the meeting signaled that didn't want to. In the end, Iran, Venezuela, and Algeria all said no to increases, according to CNBC.

It's cost $600 billion of your money. And it was supposed to rescue the economy. But has Ben Bernanke's huge financial stimulus package, known as "Quantitative Easing 2," actually worked as planned? QE2 is being wound down in the next few weeks. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has said it has left the economy "moving in the right direction."
But an analysis of the real numbers tells a very different story.

“If I can't kill it today, I'm going to stab it enough times that it stumbles out of the room,” Mr. Muralidhar told financial advisers at the Investment Management Consultants Association annual meeting yesterday. Mr. Muralidhar has the cred to make you take notice of such a statement. He's the former head of investment research for the World Bank, a former managing director at J.P. Morgan Investment Management and the head of AlphaEngine Global Investment Solutions LLC, a company he started. An economist trained at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Muralidhar argues that the foundation of modern investment portfolio theory is doing a disservice to investors.

From Bloomberg: General Motors will invest $109 million in its operations in Flint and Bay City , Mich., to support engine production for current and future fuel-efficient small cars produced for the U.S. market. The investment will protect or add 96 jobs at the two sites.

The number of food stamp recipients was essentially flat in February, the most recent month available, with 44.2 million Americans receiving benefits, according a new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The food stamp program ballooned during the recession as workers lost their jobs or saw their hours and income reduced. The rise in recipients has begun to flatten in recent months, which may mean that as the economy is improving fewer Americans are seeking to join the program. Enrollment in the program is still high though, with 11.6% more people tapping benefits in February than the same month a year earlier.

America's population of centenarians - already the largest in the world - has roughly doubled in the past 20 years to around 72,000 and is projected to at least double again by 2020, perhaps even increase seven-fold, according to the Census Bureau. The Census Bureau estimates there were 71,991 centenarians as of Dec. 1, up from 37,306 two decades earlier. While predicting longevity and population growth is difficult, the census' low-end estimate for 2050 is 265,000 centenarians; its highest projection puts the number at 4.2 million.

U.S. households are now getting more in cash handouts from the government than they are paying in taxes for the first time since the Great Depression. Households received $2.3 trillion in some kind of government support in 2010. That includes expanded unemployment benefits, as well as payments for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and stimulus spending, among other things. But that’s more than the $2.2 trillion households paid in taxes, an amount that has slumped largely due to the recession, according to an analysis by the Fiscal Times.

Gone are the plans to golf, garden or read on a creaky porch swing. Almost 40% of working Americans said they will never afford retirement, according to a report released Wednesday by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. Retirement ranked as the most important issue out of all financial concerns facing Americans, including uninsured medical expenses and rising education costs. In fact, it topped the list for the second year in a row, the survey said.

It’s not uncommon for money-management experts to have conflicting points of view. What’s hard though is squaring up those opposing opinions and trying to figure out what to do with your own money given conflicting theories. Case in point: The latest missives from two legendary investors, Rob Arnott and Bill Gross. The former argues against stocks for the long-term and the latter argues against bonds, or at least U.S. Treasurys. Arnott, the chairman of Research Affiliates, examined in his latest newsletter the equity risk premium in the U.S. since 1802 and argued that “concentrating the majority of one’s investment portfolio in one investment category (i.e. stocks), based on an unknowable and fickle long-term equity premium, is a dangerous game of ‘probability chicken.’”

If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government.

Federal Reserve Governor Elizabeth A. Duke said Thursday in a speech to the Virginia Association of Economists "Among the pre-retirement age group, those who gained and those who lost wealth during the financial crisis generally appear to act as if they had lost wealth – in that there are signs of delayed retirement and greater desire to save and to avoid risk.

It is no surprise that the average family's balance sheet declined between 2007 and 2009 or that the loss of wealth results in changed behavior. A study by the Federal Reserve, "Surveying the Aftermanth of the Storm," reveals the average household portfolio fell from $18,500 to $12,000 - more than a third. In addition, home values declined and debt levels increased.

TOKYO - Japan's devastating earthquake and deepening nuclear crisis could result in losses of up to $200 billion for the world's third largest economy. The disaster is expected to hit Japanese output sharply over the coming months, but economists warned it could result in a deeper slowdown if power shortages prove significant and prolonged, delaying or even scotching the "v-shaped" recovery that followed the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Most believe the direct economic hit will total between 10-16 trillion yen ($125-$200 billion), resulting in a contraction in second quarter gross domestic product (GDP) but a sharp rebound in the latter half of 2011 as reconstruction investment boosts growth.

Government payouts—including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance—make up more than a third of total wages and salaries of the U.S. population, a record figure that will only increase if action isn’t taken before the majority of Baby Boomers enter retirement. Even as the economy has recovered, social welfare benefits make up 35 percent of wages and salaries this year, up from 21 percent in 2000 and 10 percent in 1960, according to TrimTabs Investment Research using Bureau of Economic Analysis data.

"Unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, hit 10.3% in February -- up from 9.8% at the end of January. The U.S. unemployment rate is now essentially the same as the 10.4% at the end of February 2010." And the one indicator that nobody in the mainstream media will touch with a ten foot pole: "Underemployment, a measure that combines part-time workers wanting full-time work with those who are unemployed, surged in February to 19.9%.

NEW YORK -- Just when the U.S. economy seemed to be getting its footing, a number of new obstacles risk tripping it up. A spike in oil prices due to spreading unrest in the Middle East is the highest profile problem, but not the only one. Economists are also worried about the push to cut government spending, the end of stimulus from the Federal Reserve and the bull market in stocks running its course. While none of these factors might be enough to tip the economy back into a recession individually, "pile up enough headwinds and you're going backwards," said David Wyss, chief economist with Standard & Poor's.

 JPMorgan Chase & Co. racked up a perfect trading record for the second half of last year, making money every day after accomplishing the same feat in the first three months of the year. Traders at the New York-based bank made an average of $76 million a day last year, down from $84 million in 2009, according to an investor presentation today at the bank’s New York headquarters. The investment bank lost money on eight days last year, all in the second quarter.

Pundits and politicos promote a magical myth: a coming small business hiring boom. That fantasy is completely disconnected from the harsh realities of private enterprise. Regardless of their ideological persuasion, pundits and politicos reliably repeat the mantra that "small business is the engine of jobs growth." The mantra is followed by the pundit-politico's belief that a "small business jobs boom is right around the corner." I have news for the pundits and politicos: ain't gonna happen. Why? The answer cannot be found in the manipulated and massaged Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers (have any real jobs been created, net of jobs lost, in the past year? Who knows?) or in the punditry's Cargo-Cult-like belief in a mythical "small business jobs machine" that they have never experienced and know nothing about.

The Journal of Indexes gives academic treatment to bland investments, and so might not seem a likely source of hot controversy. The latest issue, however, is packed with it–and has greatly annoyed mutual fund titan Vanguard. A report therein gives new support for the claim that most index investors are unknowingly missing out on a large portion of the returns that their passive approach ought to provide.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal ahead of this week's annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jean-Claude Trichet warned that inflation pressures in the euro zone must be watched closely, and urged central bankers everywhere to ensure that higher energy and food prices don't gain a foothold in the global economy.

Charles Lewis Sizemore - If there is one asset class best avoided in 2011, it’s gold. At the expense of sounding overly dramatic, gold is an investment whose fundamentals are rotting from within, and you do not want to be anywhere near it when the bottom falls out. In late November, I wrote a short piece for Seeking Alpha in which I added a few more jabs at the barbarous relic. For my efforts, I received over 200 comments, most of which were hate mail.

Baby Boomers Could Force Economic Catastrophe Lawmakers will look back on 2011 as the year the U.S. started down into a financial Grand Canyon, because the first baby boomers turn 65 this year -- the front edge of a tidal wave of baby boomer retirements. "Over the next 20 years, around 10,000 baby boomers will be retiring each day," says Andrew Biggs, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. "That means more people collecting social security, more people collecting Medicare, more people collecting Medicaid as well."

What goes up must come down. It is natural to assume that the law of gravity should also apply in financial markets. After all, isn’t the oldest piece of investment advice to buy low and sell high? But in 2010 European investors would have prospered by following a different rule. Anyone who bought the best-performing stocks of the previous year would have enjoyed returns more than 12 percentage points higher than someone who bought 2009’s worst performers.

How could that possibly be, when the stock market has largely recovered? (Let's forget for a moment that the stock market rallied after 1929, but then crashed in a double dip). To find out, we'll look at a couple comparisons to get an idea of what is going on in the rest of the economy. And then we'll compare the government's efforts in the 1930s to today. During the Great Depression, home prices fell 25.9 percent in five years. The U.S. housing market is now down around 25 percent from its peak in 2006. As housing price expert Robert Shiller pointed out in September 2008:

When it comes to investing, people tend to prefer home cooking. For decades Americans gorged on U.S. stocks and barely touched foreign ones. There was good reason for that -- U.S. equities were, until recently, more widely traded and less volatile than their international counterparts -- but globalization and the continued downturn at home have given investors more reason to look outside the U.S. for growth.

For years, my wife and I have had an understanding. Clarissa would spend the money, and I would save it. Well, Clarissa is still holding up her end of the bargain, but I'm an abject failure. My company retirement accounts, despite what I thought was a relatively conservative mix, were down close to 35% in early March from the fall of 2007. That, in turn, forced me to do some painful thinking about how much risk I can stomach on my family's behalf, and how much money we can expect to have in retirement.

The longer people stay out of work, the more trouble they have finding new work. That is a fact of life that much of Europe, with its underclass of permanently idle workers, knows all too well. But it is a lesson that the United States seems to be just learning. This country has some of the highest levels of long-term unemployment — out of work longer than six months — it has ever recorded. Meanwhile, job growth has been, and looks to remain, disappointingly slow, as today's government report showed an increase in only 39,000 jobs, far below what was expected.

The euro zone's sovereign debt crisis escalated Friday as the market homed in on Spain as another potential weak spot, leaving officials scrambling to quell investors' fears. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero moved to dispel the growing anxiety surrounding the country's fiscal position Friday, saying there was "absolutely" no chance the euro zone's fourth-largest economy would seek a bailout from the European Union. But his attempt to calm the markets had little effect, with the euro tumbling and the selloff in Spanish and Portuguese sovereign bonds continuing.

The entire European Project is now at risk of disintegration, with strategic and economic consequences that are very hard to predict. EU President Herman Van Rompuy (poet, and writer of Japanese and Latin verse) warned that if Europe’s leaders mishandle the current crisis and allow the eurozone to break up, they will destroy the European Union itself. “We’re in a survival crisis. We all have to work together in order to survive with the euro zone, because if we don’t survive with the euro zone we will not survive with the European Union,” he said.

The Federal Reserve is making a high-stakes bet in the hope of getting the economy steaming along again. Nobody is sure the Fed's best efforts will work, and they may actually backfire. The Fed announced a plan to buy $600 billion in government debt, aimed at driving already low long-term interest rates even lower. The central bank would buy the debt in chunks of $75 billion a month through June of next year. Economists call it "quantitative easing." The latest package gets the name "QE2" - like the ship - because it's the second round. The Fed spent about $1.7 trillion from 2008 to earlier this year to take bonds off the hands of banks and stabilize them.

The government’s most recent auction for Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, or TIPS, received such strong demand on Monday that yields went negative for the first time in the security's history. The auction appears to reflect concerns that inflation -- which has essentially been non-existent since mid-2008 when the financial crisis hit -- could flare up again as the Federal Reserve begins a possible "quantitative easing" strategy in the coming weeks. It's a shift in sentiment in the bond market from only a few weeks ago, when the focus was heavily on the issue of the U.S. economic experiencing deflation similar to Japan. For consumers sitting on the sidelines, traders said the TIPS auction is a sign that inflation is coming – and is already here in the form of higher energy prices and food costs.

The federal bailout for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could double in size during the next three years, according to projections from the companies' federal regulator. Fannie and Freddie, the federally controlled mortgage finance giants, will need as much as $215 billion more from taxpayers in the next three years to meet their financial obligations.

Rodney Johnson is one of America’s leading investment strategists and advisors. The foundation of his success is the HS Dent system of forecasting economic change based on demographic trends.

As president of HS Dent Investment Management and HS Dent Publishing, Johnson publishes and writes for HS Dent Forecast newsletter, which is known for its in-depth analyses of change and economic growth affecting the financial markets. He appears regularly in the financial news media where he is valued for his candor and insight into economic and stock market trends. Johnson is the primary instructor for the highly successful HS Dent Demographics School launched in 2006 and attended by executives from around the world.

The foreclosure machinery that has forced millions of Americans out of their homes is beginning to seize up as some lenders and their lawyers are accused of cutting corners in their pursuit of rapid home repossessions. Evictions are expected to slow sharply, housing analysts said, as state and national law enforcement officials shine a light on questionable foreclosure methods revealed by two of the country’s biggest home lenders in the last two weeks.

 Consumer Metrics Institute - During the month and a half from August 1 to September 15, our Weighted Composite Index has improved substantially, rising from recording a year-over-year contraction rate in excess of 9% to recently registering a contraction rate near 3%. This is the largest positive movement that we have seen over half of a quarter since late 2009. The improvement has stopped (at least temporarily) the decline of our 91-day trailing quarter average (our Daily Growth Index).

It has become clear that jobs in some industries may never come back or if they do it will take years or decades for a recovery. The weakness in these sectors will make it harder for the private industry, even aided by the government, to bring down total unemployment  from 9.6% and replace the 8.3 million jobs lost during the recession. The losses in these industries have to be offset by growth in others before there can be any net increase in American employment

The "Great Recession" that began in 2008 has had many nuances, some of which can only be seen in data with higher resolution than that provided by the BEA or NBER. Our day-by-day profile of consumer demand helps us understand triggering events while also making it clear that many recent changes in consumer behavior have begun to linger -- much as the recession itself now appears to have done.

Housing will eventually recover from its great swoon - But many real estate experts now believe that home ownership will never again yield rewards like those enjoyed in the second half of the 20th century, when houses not only provided shelter but also a plump nest egg. The wealth generated by housing in those decades, particularly on the coasts, did more than assure the owners a comfortable retirement. It powered the economy, paying for the education of children and grandchildren, keeping the cruise ships and golf courses full and the restaurants humming.

Life In The Great Recession - As the Wall Street Journal reported in “From Ordering Steak and Lobster, to Serving It,” (June 2, 2009, page A17), nearly 25,000 jobs have been lost in the financial sector since August 2007 and another 30,000 are expected to be lost through 2011. This is just in New York City. The potential for the bulk of those people to find similar employment in terms of income is extremely limited. The main person profiled in the article lists the changes: His wife has returned to work, they quit dining out, they pulled their daughters out of ballet and tumbling, and they canceled cable TV. They also missed a mortgage payment and fear foreclosure and possibly bankruptcy.

THE Federal National Mortgage Association — known as Fannie Mae — and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation — Freddie Mac — were poorly structured from the time, 40 years ago, when they were set up as so-called government-sponsored enterprises. Both of these technically private companies, designed to foster the issuance of home mortgages, enjoyed implicit federal backing in the event they got into financial trouble but only weak regulation to prevent such trouble. Essentially, the federal government insured the companies’ liabilities but never charged a premium.

What is risky and what is safe? That has always been a crucial question for anyone working in the financial markets. Bankers provide their clients with an asset mix, tailored to suit the aging widow or the young entrepreneur. But what if everything you know about risk was suddenly turned upside down? In the last two years, all the stuff we thought was really safe and dull turned out to be dangerous. And the things we thought were risky ended up being quite reliable.

FINANCIAL RESEARCHER Lou Harvey, 68, is the founder of Boston's Dalbar, which rates investment firms and fund companies based on customer performance and product quality and service. The important thing for this year's study is that it's the first time we've been able to do a deep analysis of what happened after the 2008 market upheaval. We've been able to look at the effect of those events on investor behavior. What the study shows in the broadest sense is an unwillingness on the part of the investing public to rethink investment principles

The law, named after its principal authors, Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd and Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank, gives the government new authority to unwind failing financial firms that may threaten the entire system, imposes new rules on derivatives markets and creates a consumer-protection agency at the Federal Reserve to monitor everything from home loans to credit cards. The Treasury Department and other officials now begin writing the regulations that will give the framework for enforcing the law, a process that may take a year.

The Labor Department reported that consumer prices fell 0.1 percent in June, down for the third straight month, paced by further declines in energy prices. On a year-over-year basis, the government’s measure of annual inflation fell from 2.0 percent in May to just 1.1 percent in June, the lowest level since last October when the price index first pushed back into positive territory after almost a year of negative numbers.

 The US stock market has now become a concentrated pool in which just the top 99 stocks account for 50.09% of total domestic trading volume. In June, the top 20 stocks accounted for 28.94% of all domestic volume, an increase of 2.2% over May's 26.7% and a record. The top 978 names represented 90.01% of total domestic volume, while the remaining 17,597 accounted for just 10% of all dollars traded. Of this, the bottom 12,112 stocks represented less than 0.05% of daily domestic volume.

The national debt will reach 62 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by the end of this year, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said Wednesday. The budget office said the debt will reach its highest percentage of GDP since the end of World War II. The jump is driven by lower tax revenues and higher federal spending in the recent recession. By contrast, GDP has averaged "a little above" 36 percent per year over the past 40 years.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac took over a foreclosed home roughly every 90 seconds during the first three months of the year. They owned 163,828 houses at the end of March, a virtual city with more houses than Seattle. The mortgage finance companies, created by Congress to help Americans buy homes, have become two of the nation’s largest landlords. For all the focus on the historic federal rescue of the banking industry, it is the government’s decision to seize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in September 2008 that is likely to cost taxpayers the most money. So far the tab stands at $145.9 billion, and it grows with every foreclosure of a three-bedroom home with a two-car garage one hour from Phoenix. The Congressional Budget Office has predicted that the final bill could reach $389 billion.

European leaders meet in Brussels amid growing fears that Spain, Europe's fifth-largest economy, is preparing to ask for a bailout which would dwarf the €110bn (£90bn) rescue plan for Greece. The Spanish government dismissed reports that it was already in discussions with the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and the US Treasury for a rescue package worth up to €250bn. Officials in Madrid, Brussels and Paris were forced to deny that a Spanish bailout - which would take the European debt and euro crisis into a potentially dangerous new phase - was on the Brussels summit agenda.

Don and Perry were guest hosts on the nationally syndicated Mike Siegel Show. They discussed the ongoing credit crisis in the EU, including the bailout that Spain still says they do not need (but will readily except). 

Strategic asset allocation has a powerful hold on people.  Investors seem completely willing to forgive and forget all of the problems with it–apparently no matter how much pain or harm it caused. Investors who had dutifully spread their eggs among multiple baskets and stayed the course, a.k.a. buy and hold, watched helplessly from the sidelines as their retirement accounts lost a collective $2.8 trillion between the market peak in October 2007 and the trough in March 2009, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College reports.

The market jitters afflicting countries along the euro-zone’s fringe appear to be starting to rattle even so-called “core” countries like France, Germany and the Netherlands.On Friday, rumors about losses at French banks and comparisons of Hungary to Greece hammered stock markets after early gains. A worse-than-expected picture of U.S. job growth didn’t help. The derivatives market, however, gave off some worrying signals. While the cost of insuring against Greek, Portuguese, Hungarian, Irish, Italian and Spanish defaults jumped, similar costs for France and even Germany – an economy likely to expand 3% to 4% this quarter – also jumped.

Seth Klarman is worth listening to, especially when markets go mad. Mr. Klarman is president of the Baupost Group, an investment firm in Boston that manages $22 billion. His three private partnerships have returned an annual average of around 19% since inception in 1983—and nearly 17% annually over the past decade, as stocks went nowhere. But the professorial Mr. Klarman speaks in public about as often as the Himalayan yeti. In a recent letter to his clients, when he compared the financial markets to a Hostess Twinkie. "There is no nutritional value," he said. "There is nothing natural in the markets. Everything is being manipulated by the government."

Greece is considering taking legal action against U.S. investment banks that might have contributed to the country’s debt crisis, Prime Minister George Papandreou said. “Greece will look into the past and see how things went,” Papandreou said. “There are similar investigations going on in other countries and in the United States. This is where I think, yes, the financial sector, I hear the words fraud and lack of transparency. So yes, yes, there is great responsibility here.”

Here is the naked truth: capital markets are designed to reallocate money from dumb people to smart people.  If that weren’t true, smart people wouldn’t play.  Smart people don’t play unless they have a probability of winning.  For example, smart people don’t tend to play the lottery.  (If you have ever wondered why the PowerBall winner is always a nitwit and flat broke again in three years, now you know.)  Although the first sentence of this article is for shock value, the naked truth is actually quite comforting.

U.S. stocks tumbled the most in a year on concern that Europe’s debt crisis will halt the global recovery. The selloff erased $1.25 trillion in market value as the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell almost 1,000 points, its biggest intraday loss since 1987, before paring losses. The Dow average ended the session down 347.8 points, or 3.2 percent, at 10,520.32 at the 4 p.m. close of trading in New York. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell as much as 8.6 percent, its biggest plunge since December 2008, before trimming declines to end at 1,128.15, down 3.2 percent. It was the biggest drop since April 20, 2009, for both measures.

In his speech and in a two-part article he is co-authoring in the CFA Institute’s March/April 2010 Financial Analysts Journal (along with Morningstar/Ibbotson’s James Xiong, Tom Idzorek, and Peng Chen), Roger G. Ibbotson revisits the Brinson-Hood-Bebower contention that asset allocation accounts for 90% of a portfolio’s return, arguing instead that the sources of variation of returns from a portfolio are around 75% from the overall market, with the remainder about equally split from portfolio-specific asset allocation policies and from individual securities in the portfolio, along with the timing of trades, and fees.

Tom Dorsey began his financial career as a stockbroker at Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Smith in 1974 and then was offered the opportunity to manage the Options Strategy Department at Wheat, First Securities. In January 1987, he left Wheat, First Securities to start Dorsey, Wright & Associates as an outsourced Options Strategy firm. After the crash, Dorsey realized that the Options business would never be the same. He changed the company’s focus from an options strategy firm to an equity research company, primarily because any option strategy first begins with researching the underlying stock. Today the company employees 16 people with clients spanning the globe in addition to managing over $700 million in assets through Separately Managed Accounts, Annuities, Mutual Funds, and Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). Mr. Dorsey has 34 years of experience in the financial services business and is the author of numerous books on the Point & Figure methodology as well as motivational books. Mr. Dorsey is an award winning speaker having taught the Point & Figure methodology throughout the world.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc was charged with fraud on Friday by U.S. securities regulators in the structuring and marketing of a debt product tied to subprime mortgages. The Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit alleges that Paulson & Co, a major hedge fund run by the billionaire John Paulson, worked with Goldman in creating the collateralized debt obligation, and stood to benefit as its value fell, costing investors more than $1 billion.

Emerging markets, because of their characteristics, should matter a great deal to investors today. Investors handicap themselves by limiting how much they invest in emerging markets.The differences that justified the segregation of emerging and developed markets have disappeared or are in the process of disappearing.

No investor will ever admit to a desire to buy losers in the stock market but when their behavior is examined, that is exactly what they do. This seems to be a very strange behavior for thoughtful and careful investors who are making investment decisions that will affect their financial well-being.

The bursting of the real estate bubble and the ensuing recession have hurt jobs, home prices and now Social Security. This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Walk into any big-box store in the country and you’d be forgiven for thinking that nothing is made in America anymore. Yet even as countless U.S. companies have moved production to other countries, American factories continue to churn out hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods annually — everything from Ford trucks and Boeing airplanes to Gordon & Smith surfboards and Viking appliances.

In recent months, you've probably heard a lot about the benefits of converting traditional pre-tax individual retirement accounts into Roth IRAs. But here's something you may not have heard: Many taxpayers should run, not walk, from a Roth conversion. We will tell you why.

Even as many Americans are still struggling to recover from the country's worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, another crisis - one that will be even worse than the current one - is looming, according to a new report from a group of leading economists, financiers, and former federal regulators.

January mass layoffs edge up on weak manufacturing data.

MPT (standard asset allocation modeling) is largely dependent on normal distribution. Market returns are assumed to cluster in the center of the bell curve while the infrequent big changes dot the outer edges. All price changes are independent of each other, there are no trends. The market is efficient, everything that can be known about a given security is reflected in its current price. You can control your risk exposure with proper diversification. We do not believe any of these things are true, but there are other strategies that can clear these things up.

Unemployment may have dropped below 10% last month, but the number only looks good in a vacuum. The Bureau of Labor Statistics , the bearer of much of the federal government’s bad news over the last two years, said that the number of jobs open in America dropped to 2.5 million in December. That was a sharp decline from 3.2 million in the same month of 2008. The BLS reported that “Over the 12 months ending in December, hires totaled 49.4 million and separations totaled 53.6 million, yielding a net employment loss of 4.2 million.”

After cutting taxes for 95% of working families in his first year, President Obama has proposed a budget that would raise taxes on 100% of them. Even as the White House calls for another quick shot of stimulus to speed up job creation, its new 10-year budget promises to impose a fiscal regimen of major tax hikes and modest spending curbs.

Since the start of the recession two years ago, corporate and consumer balance sheets have been engaged in a forced bout of cutbacks that figure prominently in fourth-quarter earnings reports coming out now. The signs are everywhere. General Electric Co.'s chief financial officer on Friday referred to the "focused shrinkage" of its financial unit. A day earlier, Target Corp. said it plans to test stores that will have 50% fewer items.

Are bonds the next bubble?

Investors poured money into bonds and bond funds last year in search of safety and higher returns. Now the bond advantage is shrinking as risks are rising. "It has a bubble look to it," says Thomas Atteberry, the manager of FPA New Income, one of the largest independent bond funds.

Mr. Ken Gronbach is an expert demographer, futurist and generational markete.  Gronbach has founded 2 advertising agencies in his lifetime.

It is one of the bleakest new years that states have seen in over a decade.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., overseeing the dissolution of failed banks at the fastest pace in 17 years, boosted its 2010 budget 56 percent to $4 billion to manage further shutdowns. The additional 1,643 FDIC staff will include 1,559 temporary workers and 84 permanent employees, with a majority of positions added to the division that handles bank failures.

 
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Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree." Those famous words were spoken more than 30 years ago by the late Louisiana Sen. Russel B. Long when Congress was looking for ways to raise revenue. Some members of Congress believe they've found the fellow behind the tree: the Wall Street "speculator."

 
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We will review what San Francisco Fed President Janet L. Yellen has to say about how things are shaping up. The big issue is how strong the upturn will be. With such enormous reservoirs of slack in the form of high unemployment and idle productive capacity, we need a strong rebound to put unemployed people back to work and get underutilized factories, offices, and stores humming again.

80% of the top US economists believe that the recession is over. Is it time to send up a cheer or stay hunkered down? What will the recovery look like, when will the jobs be back and when does consumer spending kick in?

80% of the top US economists believe that the recession is over. Is it time to send up a cheer or stay hunkered down? What will the recovery look like, when will the jobs be back and when does consumer spending kick in?

This is shaping up to be a great time for US consumers, America is on sale. With companies competing for every dollar of income, the consumer is the big winner.

This inevitable shift in consumer spending is going to make it tougher for the very people who need the savings to get the funds put away. How is your retirement plan looking?

It has been a year since the credit meltdown and the collapse of investment banker, Lehman Brothers. The question remains about whether cronyism kept their competitors alive of if the likes of Goldman Sachs should have been allowed to face bankruptcy court, too.

Here in the United States we are debating a major change in our health care system and the difficulties of paying for it. We are trying to implement a national policy that most Europeans are trying to unwind due to unmanageable costs.

This week’s poll asked how you are dealing with investment decisions. Market volatility has not gone away. Many issues remain for investors to work their way back to financial health in their personal portfolios and their 401k accounts...

This week’s poll addresses the impact of the current recession on consumer behavior and the willingness of citizens to support state services during an extended recession. Don and Perry will discuss the responses from the radio audience that participated in the poll and what should be expected from local and state government as we work our way through the Great Recession.

Neither President Obama nor his Administration has published any proposed changes to our healthcare system. He has talked a lot and criticized much. However, the only published proposal – HR 3200 -- is from the House of Representatives. A copy is available by clicking on this link.

Here are just some of the discussions you'll hear on this week's show:

During his speech at a National Press Club luncheon, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), questioned the point of lawmakers reading the health care bill.

For the  9th consecutive year Investor Resources, Inc. is in Wealth Manager Magazine among Top Dogs of independent investment advisory firms.

For the  9th consecutive year Investor Resources, Inc. is in Wealth Manager Magazine among Top Dogs of independent investment advisory firms.

Don and Perry will be interviewing Roger Sherrard this weekend. Roger is a local attorney specializing in real estate law and estate planning. We will be discussing pros and cons of various estate planning techniques, the impending change in estate tax law and what actions need to be taken to preserve the most possible ...

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station ...

For the Mackinac Center, Folsom has authored dozens of widely reprinted articles about Michigan's rich and varied past as well as a 1997 book, Empire Builders: How Michigan Entrepreneurs Helped Make America Great.

Prior to the mid-80s, powerful personal computers were not available to let us compare consumer spending data and the historic performance of our economy and determine the predictable nature of either.

Don and Perry will be interviewing Gary Cox, CFA, with Genworth Financial Asset Management. Genworth manages various global investment strategies with a strong focus on preserving capital in difficult markets...

Prior to the mid-80s, powerful personal computers were not available to let us compare consumer spending data and the historic performance of our economy and determine the predictable nature of either...

Using exciting new research developed from years of hands-on business experience, Harry S. Dent, Jr. offers a refreshingly positive and understandable view of the economic future. As a best selling author on economics, Mr. Dent is the developer of The Dent Method - an economic forecasting approach based on changes in demographic trends.

President, Foudy Insurance Agencies, Inc., an employee benefits agency specializing in the sale and service of life insurance, group health insurance as well as related products to small employers in the greater Southern California area.

Our average size client has approximately 40 employees. The products we promote and service include individual and group Life, Medical, Dental, Disability, Long Term Care, MediCare Supplement plans as well as qualified and non-qualified retirement plans.

Don rips into the Chrysler bankruptcy & the results of the listener poll questions on that subject. Followed by a can't miss discussion on the change in taxes and the effect it is having on state financing.

Don delves into current issues concerning the economy and increasing difficulties we have shifting our economic reference from an inflationary to a deflationary environment. Reality has been changing. It is hard for us to change our attitudes.

This past week protesters in cities throughout America participated in the "New American Tea Party", speaking out against what they considered to be unfair taxation.

The trend for countries around the world is to slash corporate tax rates to spur economic growth, yet Washington has yet to come to grips with this financial reality...

Maybe Jay Leno should host Meet the Press. Bowling and canine questions aside, Leno pressed President Barack Obama hard on the House’s vote to strip AIG employees of their retention bonuses via the tax code...